Caleb D. Hammond, 90; Led Family's Map-Making Business Into Digital Age

By DENNIS HEVESI

Published: June 9, 2006

Caleb D. Hammond Jr., who was president of C. S. Hammond & Company, the map makers, from 1948 to 1974, died Monday in Summit, N.J. He was 90 and lived in Maplewood, N.J.

The cause was complications of a stroke, said his son, Dean Hammond, who later headed the company.

Mr. Hammond helped the company, founded by his grandfather in 1900, as it evolved into the computer age from a time when dozens of cartographers sat at drafting tables and researchers called municipal officials around the country.

''He was the bridge,'' his son said, ''helping the longtime workers get comfortable with the new technology.''

C. S. Hammond & Company was second only to Rand McNally in Chicago in producing road maps and atlases pinpointing cities and towns, large and tiny, across the country and around the world. The 1955 edition of ''Hammond's Ambassador World Atlas'' included 326 maps and a 242-page index with more than 100,000 location names.

Mr. Hammond made his mark on the family-owned company by selling its maps to book publishers, including Random House and Simon & Schuster. In 1955 he produced a novel item, a foldable plastic globe that inflated to 18 inches in diameter.

In 1999, the company was sold to Langenscheidt Publishers, a German company that produces travel books and maps. Now known as the Hammond World Atlas Company, it is based in Springfield, N.J.

Caleb Dean Hammond Jr. was born on June 24, 1915, in Orange, N.J. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1937. In World War II, he served in the Coast Guard.

In April 1948, Mr. Hammond was elected president of the company, succeeding his late uncle, Robert S. Hammond. He had been vice president and secretary of the company. Mr. Hammond's grandfather, Caleb Stillson Hammond, started the company in Brooklyn. It later moved to Manhattan, then to a warehouse on a slope near the family home in Maplewood.

At any one time, more than 100 cartographers, artists and researchers might be working for the company. About 25 percent of their efforts were devoted to gathering material, the rest to updating old data. Mr. Hammond participated in the research.

In a 1950 interview with The New York Herald Tribune, he told how he had written to a government official in India, seeking information on villages.

''Six months later,'' he said, ''I got an answer apologizing for the delay, but saying he had been on an elephant hunt and was just now getting back to his correspondence.''

Although he retired in 1974, Mr. Hammond remained active, working with the staff as it adjusted to using computers. The company produced the first digitally generated world atlas in 1992.

Besides his son, whose full name is Caleb Dean Hammond III, Mr. Hammond is survived by his wife of 66 years, Patricia Treacy Ehrgott Hammond; a brother, Stuart Lindsley Hammond; two daughters, Beth Lynn Steele and Wendie H. Masterson; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.